Hitachi Data Systems released its top five storage predictions for 2008, with data de-duplication rated the hottest and most innovative technology to
hit the market since virtualization.

The company's ANZ managing director, Mark Kay, said data de-duplication will
reach prime time in 2008 as IT managers discover the technology and its benefits.

He said data de-duplication can deliver businesses savings of 10:1, 20:1 and
even over 25:1 in terms of storage backups, making retention of large amounts
of data for longer periods on disk a viable and attractive option. Hitachi predicts
the death of network-based virtualization and the rise of controller-based virtualization
as it becomes a dominant approach to storage virtualization in 2008.

Kay said controller-based virtualization will provide a solid framework for
extensions such as thin provisioning and dynamic tiered storage as these technologies
also experience success in 2008.

"Looking even deeper into the future, Hitachi predicts that storage virtualization
will be 'de rigueur' and the battles over where it should reside will be resolved,"
he said.

As the skills shortage worsens, Hitachi believes that it will reach a boiling
point in 2008 whereby the effectiveness of storage operations will be severely
impacted.

Kay said basic activities such as backup and recovery, DR testing and capacity
management will be done poorly, if at all.

"Consequently, Hitachi predicts that we will see a shift in the economics
of storage management as companies experience greater cost exposures to information
risk, compliance, storage utilization and IT's responsiveness to business,"
he said.

"Off-shoring of storage administration activities will increase as a result
of the skills shortage, but offshore organizations will face similar challenges."
Kay went on to say that efforts to push business continuity and disaster recovery
to branch offices and midsize businesses will continue in 2008,

He said there will be huge investments in disk-to-disk backup.

"This technology has already experienced huge success in the Australian
market as organizations look to eliminate branch office tape changes and provide
faster, more reliable restoration of data from backups," he said.

So what is the number one prediction for 2008? Kay claims data center problems
will worsen before "going green" becomes mainstream.

"Many Australian companies have hit a wall in the data center, running
out of floor space or reaching the limits of their electrical and cooling systems,"
he said.

" Hitachi predicts that this data center dilemma will worsen in 2008,
forcing CIOs and IT managers to turn toward leaner, greener practices such as
dynamic provisioning, data de-duplication, power-down and storage virtualization
to rectify the problem.

" As such, Hitachi believes that green practices and technologies will
play an increasingly central role in CIOs' project and budget planning in 2008."

One of the more obvious trends in storage in recent years is the battle between
tape and disk.

Tape library revenue dropped more than 15 percent from 2005 to 2006.

Disk's ability to back up and recover data faster at a slightly higher premium
than tape has made it the preferable way to protect data.

"The cost per megabyte of magnetic disk storage continues to fall, resulting
in a perception that disk storage is closing the price gap with tape storage,"
according to Freeman Reports.

A recent report from the Enterprise Strategy Group shows that 21 percent of
the respondents backed up data to disk, 51 percent backed up to disk and then
to tape and 29 percent backed up to tape only.

» posted by abennett

Computerworld Australia

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